Buses filled largely with women and children were turned away by mindless yahoos protesting, blocking the roads at Murietta, California, though the children were only going to be processed in a local facility. This sudden, unexpected wave of underage illegal migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, encouraged by misinformation from coyote style emigrant smuggling gangs, and terrified by violence, civil war and thuggery at home--these refugees, really--have been rounded up, shoved into improvised warehousing in the USA. Theyre not being mistreated--the Dept of Homeland Security was flummoxed by this sudden problem. But theyre in purgatory. The cold politics of it all seems to call for them to be swiftly repatriated to the land of thugs and civil war. But I believe the ethical thing to do--the Christian thing if you like--would be to offer them shelter here. Perhaps American Hispanics would take them in; others would volunteer. (Yes, me too.) They could eventually be situated here. Theyre refugees. Why not do the right thing? There is another consideration--it could well be that this influx of desperate children is the fault, ultimately, of the policies of earlier administrations of the United States of America. Conservative administrations, especially Reagans, supported dictatorships; death squads, by some accounts, were trained and funded by our own intelligence services. Certainly we were perfectly willing to support extremist right wing political polarities for the benefit of, say, the United Fruit Company, at the expense of the people of Central America. In supporting dictatorships we supported hegemony--we oppressed the many for the few. The USA inadvertently cultivated poverty and desperation--and gangs and civil war. So, going back decades, we see that this is our...well, it is our karma. It is our responsibility. And so we should take these kids in.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 04:41:37 +0000